Tag: multiculturalism

The War Against Non-Christians

tekanji

By now, I’m sure y’all have heard about the so-called War on Christmas. Because, you know, Christians in America are an oppressed group. Unlike Jews, Muslims, pagans of various stripes, or atheists. It’s not like their God is in the pledge that children have to speak every day… oh, wait, it is. Well, it’s not like the majority of their religious holidays are national holidays… oh, wait, they are. Uh. Er. They’re oppressed, really! I mean, prayer in school has been outlawed, evolution is taught in science class, the god-given commandments are not allowed to be in public buildings, and now… now they have to put up with “PC” phrases such as “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” being said alongside “Merry Christmas”. If this continues, people of other faiths (or lack of faith) might start thinking that their beliefs are equal to those of the God Warriors!

I, myself, became a casualty of this vicious war when I was dealing with a credit card issue just a few days ago.

I was on the phone with the representative and after we had resolved everything she said, “Ha… Merry Christmas.”

I replied, “And a Happy Holidays to you.” Truth be told, what I really had wanted to say was, “Where the hell do you get off assuming that I celebrate Christmas?” But, really, it might not have been the rep’s fault. From the way she started saying something else, it sounds like it’s company policy. And that, my friends, is just not cool.

In other related news, my mom was at Safeway today getting a bunch of stuff for dinner (we’re celebrating my sister’s b-day ’cause she’s in town and so mom is making the main course, I’m making soup, and my sister’s fiance is making her cake) and she wanted to pick up a nice holiday card for her friend. Safeway stocks Hallmark cards, by the way. Row after row had “Merry Christmas” but nary a “Happy Holidays”, “Season’s Greetings”, or even “Happy Hannukah” was to be seen. She searched and searched and searched and, just as she was about to give up, the person working that area (described as “a nice old lady”) asked her if she needed any help.

“Why, yes,” she said as nicely as possible. “I’m looking for a holiday card, but all I see are ones that say ‘Merry Christmas’.”

“Oh,” the employee said, “Let me help you find one.”

So, she searched and searched while my mom (in a still nice, but loud enough voice to attract attention) talked about how she was so surprised, since she’s never had trouble finding a proper holiday card before. After a little bit, the employee asked mom why a Christmas card wouldn’t just suffice.

“So you’re saying that I should give my Jewish friends a Christmas card?!” was Mom’s response.

Abashed at her suggestion when it was stated like that, the employee replied, “Oh, no. Of course not. We’ll find something suitable.”

At the point where she was venturing into the generic “Thank You” cards, my mom had to gently tell her that, no, she didn’t want a card that said “thanks”; she wanted a holiday card. When none were to be found, she told the employee that it was all right and she’d just see if she had any left over from last year. At that point, a few other customers had been looking over the shelves (as most of us will do when someone is having trouble with something) and coming up empty, as well. Thanking the employee for her help, mom checked out with her purchases and came home sans-holiday card. With any luck, the employee will tell her boss that they lost a customer because of the lack of appropriate holiday cards.

I’d just like to give a big “thumbs down” to Safeway/Hallmark for excluding me, my family, and our non-Christian friends with your Christian-only holiday cards. I’m sick of being excluded by the wingnut branch of Christians who think that inclusive language or policies are an “attack” on Christianity. No, idiots, the attack is on the groups you’re trying to exclude.

Acknowledging Inersections: MRA's, Feminists, and Gender

tekanji

Hugo posted on MRA’s (Men’s Right’s Activists) and marriage on his thread, Querying the MRAs about marriage. He quoted a few of his resident MRA posters, and I decided to address a (possibly unintentional) implied undertone to one of the quotes about not wanting to be yet another person’s plaything. To which I asked the semi-rhetorical question, “But, somehow, it’s ok for women to go through this?”

For those of you unfamiliar with MRA’s, they’re men belonging to various specific organizations that focus primarily on men’s rights (or lack thereof) in the family court system. On the surface, it seems like a noble goal. And I’m sure for some in their ranks it is just about achieving equal representation in the way the legal system views divorce and child responsibilities. However, where the disconnect happens for me is that most of the MRA’s I’ve come in contact with have wrongfully blamed feminism, and sometimes Western women in general, for their problems.

One of the beliefs that some of them hold that I find to be particularly abhorrent is quoted in Hugo’s post:

As Fenn writes, many men are choosing to pursue immigrant girls from more established cultures who are comfortable in their own less-complex skins and bring their own flourishes of exotica and mystery with them.

First off, calling foreign women (although I’m sure they’d lump the men into a similar category) “less-complex” is insulting and, frankly, wrong. Anyone with a working knowledge of any foreign country would know that people are people, no matter where they live. Coming from a different culture in no way invalidates one’s personhood; it just makes it hard for people ignorant of everything but their own culture to understand the person in question.

Second of all, this whole Othering of (foreign) women is so 1950s. “Exotica and mystery”? Come on. All that is just a pretty way to saying that they don’t want to be bothered with someone they have to see as a human being. Far better for them to do the mail-order bride thing (a term that by its very nature calls up the idea of buying and shipping property rather than a human being) than actually have to build a relationship with someone who they see as their equal.

While I hope that the whole “mail-order bride” idea is an extreme example of their ideals, it does illustrate a notion that I’ve found expressed in one way or another in all of the MRA posts that I’ve read. All MRA’s seem to support a gender caste system and, indeed, for many of them it is a very strict gender caste system. In general, they want their men and women to subscribe to the cult of masculinity and the cult of femininity respectively, meaning breadwinning patriarchs supported by submissive housewives.

They rage on and on about court systems that support just that notion (female as “natural” mother, male as monetary provider) but refuse to acknowledge that a gender democracy is needed for those systems to change.

In Hugo’s thread I accused them of hypocrisy:

I just don’t understand how someone could be more than willing to see their own oppression while being unwilling (unable?) to see how their exact circumstances apply to women – indeed how their exact circumstances have applied to women for centuries.

Now, after all my discussion on how the MRA movement supports a gender caste, how it blames feminism/Western women for their woes, and how it wants its advocates to be the sole victims of the system, I’m going to turn around and apply my quoted statement to feminism.

I have been witness to several feminists denying that sexism against men (both institutionalized and individual) exists. Indeed, while feminism is in general a movement that focuses on not only female oppression, but also the way that many different oppressions (racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) intersect, many feminists have a hard time acknowledging links between one or more of these oppressions. Heck, if I dug deep enough I’m sure I would have a hard time linking at least one oppression to feminism.

To be fair to the feminists I’m referring to, their statements were always in reference to men coming into their spaces and trying to de-rail their discussions by whining about how they were hurt by x, too. It wasn’t about these men’s experiences, though, it was about monopolizing the conversation and taking the emphasis off of the issues at hand. This, understandably, made the replies angry and harsh. To be further fair to the discussion, the valid concerns that occasionally popped up lead a few of the feminists to create an offshoot community called Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. The fact that it’s not a very active community is likely a testimony to how many of those “but men are hurt by x, too” debates weren’t real comments to foster discussion, but rather hurtful attempts to halt meaningful examination of topics.

But, for all my fairness, the reality exists: some feminists either refuse to acknowledge that the way the patriarchy oppresses men directly relates to the oppression of women, or even that the patriarchy can oppress men at all.

Of course, the most obvious expression of the patriarchy oppressing men is already given in my MRA primer: gender caste. The cult of masculinity operates on the principle that a man must be “masculine” because being “feminine” is beneath him. I challenge any reader, feminist or no, to demonstrate how that isn’t 1) male oppression by the patriarchy, and/or 2) directly linked to the oppression of women.

The governing principle of a gender caste system is to force all people to worship at the altar of its gender cults. That means that while the cult of masculinity affords men many more privileges than the cult of femininity affords women, it takes away men’s choices in self-expression as readily as it takes away women’s choices. Indeed, living in a society where second-wave feminism has gained me the right to enter the male sphere, I’d say that ostensibly that the cult of masculinity was more rigid than its sister cult. Of course, being the gender that is seen as “lesser”, I’d say that women are still getting the short end of the stick. I just acknowledge that the goal of freeing women from oppression will also free men: in a gender democracy I won’t be the second sex and, therefore, all men will be free to explore their “feminine” sides without fear of being seen as inferior.

On the MRA’s end, that means that equality will be achieved in family court because relationships will be seen as partnerships instead of hierarchies. Of course, equality will come at a high cost for those who believe in gender caste; in order to get equal representation, they must first accept equal responsibility: in the relationship, in and outside the home, and in raising the children.

Gender: Making a Caste System Into a Democracy

tekanji

For so long I’ve wanted a good way to articulate the battle feminists wage over gender. Too often we are accused of wanting to make everyone “the same” (aka. “like men”), but that’s neither possible nor, in my opinion, a helpful discourse in any way. People are not the same. Period. It has very little to do with the sex that they are born into and a whole lot to do with their individual traits, which are influenced but not dictated by primary and secondary sex characteristics. Thus far, I’ve used the terms “cult of masculinity” and “cult of femininity” as shorthand for society mandated gender roles, but they reference more the specific traits seen as “essential” to either gender and less the reality of what forcing people to follow these strict gender binaries really is.

Enter a comment on a mostly unrelated post on the feminist LJ community [emphasis mine]:

There are feminists who believe that the way to solve sexism is to do away with gender, but i think a more practical, interesting, and diversity-friendly approach is just to make gender voluntary or democratic, as opposed to the rigid “caste system” we have now, where your gender is determined by a doctor at birth and is seen thereafter as eternally immutable.

[From Not a REAL FEMINIST!!!, comment by sophiaserpentia]

And there it is, in black and white terms that any one should be able to understand: democracy vs. a caste hierarchy. Who, among Westerners at least, would claim a rigid system with little mobile ability to be superior to a system that purports to champion the individual’s pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness? And if you support democracy in your governmental institutions, if you support it for yourself, then you have no leg to stand on when it comes to supporting a caste system over a democratic one when talking about gender.

Even if you believe in gender essentialism – a belief system yet to be proven, or even strongly supported, by science – then giving people the choice to act in a way that befits them hurts no one. If boys are “naturally” suited to x and girls are “naturally” suited to y, then in a neutral environment they’ll gravitate towards that anyway. If girls don’t like science, then why go through extraordinary measures to keep them out? If all boys are so tough, then why take such extreme measures to shame, and in some cases injure, those who show their feelings or other “weaknesses”?

But, the truth is, gender essentialism is a crock. The very existence of intersexed and transgendered people proves that a person’s identity is more than their chromosomes, or their primary sex characteristics, or even their secondary sex characteristics. We see further evidence of this in the visible correlation between more freedom for people to find an individual identity apart from the traditional one assigned their gender and the increased in varied expressions of gender.

Indeed, if we take a look at Southeast Asia, we find that their different views on gender has lead to a vastly different model than the Western one [emphasis mine]:

The concept of gender is much more complicated in Southeast Asia, with the complexities from social relationships, status, history and even religion. For example, it is often said that women in Southeast Asia has always enjoyed a higher social standing because of their roles in household management and their involvement in local trading activities. This means that it is difficult to establish very clear-cut distinctions between the polarity of male and female using gender roles. Both men and women often share these “traits”. Should trade and management of household finances be considered traits in exemplifying masculinity or femininity?

[…]

Based on my fieldwork on transsexual performers (kathoey) in Phuket, Thailand, I have found that there are many individuals who cross-dress, for different reasons and there are many kathoey (transsexual males) who are comfortable with having both penises and breasts. These people are therefore, satisfied to be in the “territory in-between” and see no need to transgress the gender boundary to become “totally women”. Gender can no longer be strictly defined in terms of possessing biological genitalia and the situational flexibility of gender and sexuality must be recognized. There has been a gradual increase in the number of people who have come to recognize themselves as constituting a separate “third gender” – the transsexual.

[…]

Rather than attempting to cross the gender boundary and passing off as a non-transsexual man or woman, many transsexuals are increasingly seeing themselves as a transgender individual, in a third gender category altogether. Some Western scholars such as Marjory Garber (1992) have advocated the need to escape from the bipolar notions of gender and use a “third category” to describe these new possibilities of gender identification. Transgenderism describes more than crossings between poles of masculinity and femininity. It means transgressing gender norms that are socially-defined. Gender definitions with clear boundaries are also not feasible.

[From Transgressing the Gender Boundary by Wong Ying Wuen]

Wong’s study of Southeast Asian comes to a conclusion that many scholars in the West are only beginning to understand: people are not easily pigeonholed into binary categories. Modern feminism has by and large already embraced this concept, at least from my personal experiences as well as the scholarship I have read on the subject. Because of this, it seems so absurd to me when non-feminists/anti-feminists claim that feminists want to make everyone “the same” – if we acknowledge that people cannot, and should not, be forced into a binary caste system, why on Earth would we advocate forcing them into a singular caste system?

No, what feminists advocate, and indeed what all people regardless of their stance on gender essentialism should advocate, is a gender democracy. Everyone should be allowed to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. What that means is that it should be ok for me to cut my hair short, play video games, and have equal opportunity in the job world if that’s what I want. It means that my friends should all be able to choose to be stay-at-home-parents or not, choose to be caregivers or not, choose to cry or not, regardless of their gender.

It’s not wrong to let an individual choose for hirself what is, and is not, good for hir. What’s wrong is when society takes away that choice with laws, traditions, and social pressure. Choosing a gender democracy over a caste system is a win-win situation; it allows for non-traditional genders to co-exist with traditional ones. The only losers in a democracy are those who are more interested in control than the good of the people.

WoW Whining, revisited

tekanji

Over at Utopian Hell, Astare took me to task for some of my cited reasons why I left WoW. I was thinking about writing this post anyway, but after reading what she and Aurora had to say (even after writing a novel in response – no, I wasn’t kidding when I said being concise pains me) I felt the need to elaborate on why I cancelled my account.

My feeling about Blizzard and women is the main reason I left. Because of the character limit, it was the only reason I felt the strong need to address in the “why are you leaving?” comment field. For the sake of my argument, and the fact that my anger was mainly directed towards that, I used the issue as my sole address in my previous post. Despite that, it wasn’t the only reason I left.

While I did mentally set aside the entire summer to play WoW (after all the hype about it, and so many of my friends being addicted to it, how could I not?), the reality is that I have more important things to do. Firstly, I’ve been travelling almost non-stop since I vacated my apartment in July. I just got the internet set up at my home base, but I’m intending to be here only a little more than half of each week and then in September I’ll be in Miami for the entire month. My current laptop cannot handle WoW, or any MMO. I also have a slew of real life appointments I need to take care of before I go to Japan in April, the most important of which is setting up and getting a tubal ligation. And last, but certainly not least, Sarah and I have been seeking representation for Children of the Storm for about a year now and if I don’t get my ass in gear and finish this round of editing we’ll never get the sucker published.

Time issues aside, because if I was hooked on the game I know I would make time for it, there was one major aspect of the gameplay that I wasn’t fond of. It’s actually the one way in which I think FFXI outstripped WoW, although ironically it was also an aspect of FFXI that was flawed enough to be a driving factor in my losing interest in the game. I’m talking about their party system. In FFXI you simply couldn’t get far into the game without having to play nice; partying with people was just that integral. The social aspect of it also made the game a lot more fun to play; there was a constant strategizing, chatting, and camaraderie from teamwork that made me feel like I was a part of a community of like-minded people. I had to actively seek out people to party with in WoW because, experience wise, it wasn’t generally a good bargain. When I actually found people I had a good time, but my social network outside of my guild was much smaller than what I had had in FFXI. Soloing (both grinding and solo-questing) just isn’t fun for me. Ideally, I’d like to see a mixture of the FFXI large-party emphasis and the WoW solo/small-party ability so that the teamwork learning curve is steep, but not so much so that during non-peak hours it’s impossible to find enough people to get a useable party going.

Another area that I thought FFXI excelled in and WoW lost in was the multicultural aspect. In FFXI, because I speak a little Japanese, I was able to combine my meagre knowledge with the auto-translate function (brilliant idea, imho) in order to play with a broader range of players. Sure, the conversation wasn’t great, but I loved the ability to connect with these people and fight together for a common goal (getting XP). I truly believe that the fact that the servers weren’t Western-centric impacted the overall feeling of the community, as well as the overall tolerance. Sure, I encountered my fair share of bigots, but their numbers were far exceeded by those who were willing and eager to party and communicate with anyone regardless of race/gender/orientation/what-have-you.

So, I guess part of what I’m saying is that I think each MMO brings its own unique pros and cons to light. I do wish that I had been able to stick it out longer with WoW. I most certainly wish that I didn’t feel like Blizzard was exacerbating the “girl power must be sexy/sexual” trend I’ve seen in Hollywood in the past several years. But, in the end my leaving is inevitable and, at the very least, it gives me a chance to explore more MMOs on the market.

Sexism, racism, and xenophobia oh my!

tekanji

I’ve spent time discussing over at East Asia Blog the racism and xenophobia of East Asia in the context of the kerfluffle surrounding the China/Japan problems, but now I’m going to turn to something more close to home: Michael Lohman, Asian fetishism, and the xenophobia, racism, and sexism inherent in American communities.

A few months ago, feministing had a post about Michael Lohman’s assault on Asian women. On one of the feminist live journals I check out from time to time, I came across a post that linked to a forum called ModelMinority: A Guide To Asian American Empowerment. The article posted, For Asian Women, ‘Fetish’ is Less Than Benign, highlights the problems with American society at large while the comments show the problems that the Asian American community is part of.

American society seems to be perversely fascinated by “submissive” women, whether it be finding one, forcing someone to become one, or imagining one. This is not only nothing new but it is, arguably, an integral part of the Puritan ideals America was founded on. What comes into play here, however, is the stereotyping of all Asian women as the ideal submissive woman, the real facts about these women be damned. This notion is not limited to sexual perverts, but can hit anyone: friends, family, and any other people who are usually against racism. I cannot count the number of times I have heard people talk about how submissive Asian women are; I remember having a conversation with one of my cousins about how he wanted a Korean wife because Korean women were so submissive. My story is merely an anecdote and, like the Michael Lohman case, is easily dismissed as an outside incident.

Many might discredit this news as an isolated incident of perversity, but the fact is that there is a pattern in which Asian women are targeted for sexual fetishes, harassment and assaults, even on college campuses. For example, in 2000, two Japanese college women were abducted, raped, videotaped and told that if they told anybody what had happened, the videotapes would be sent to their fathers. The three white assailants admitted targeting Asian women precisely because they had a sexual fetish for “submissive” Asian women, but also because they believed that this same submissiveness and cultural shame would prevent the women from reporting the assaults.

The article begins to explore some of the reasons behind this fetishizing of Asian women coming, not surprisingly, to the media.

Though it may be difficult to identify the exact origins of violence targeted at Asian women, there is no denying that media portrayal of this minority population has had an effect on building preconceived notions and shaping stereotypes of Asian women as passive, exotic and more easily dominated. Images of the Japanese Geisha girl, the South Asian seductress and the China doll pervade American culture and add to the misconception of Asian women. This has had disturbing results. For instance, in 2002, Jennifer Lynn Gossett and Sarah Byrne conducted a content-analysis study of 31 pornographic Web sites that advertised scenes depicting the rape or torture of women, and found that nearly half of the sites used depictions of Asian women as the rape victim.

This fetishization of Asian women is, among other things, a manifestation of American racism/xenophobia. The Asian woman is objectified, dehumanized, and exulted as exotic and Other; an animal that needs to be tamed. While this process is not too different from what all women, regardless of race, go through, the element of Asian-ness adds something more to the Otherness/exoticism of these women. Perhaps, since women have long been the gatekeepers to morality and society, it would not be so far off to suggest that part of this fetishism might be a way to “conquer” the East. But that is mere speculation; I would have to do more research into the matter to support that kind of claim.

The fetishization described in the article is bad enough, but some of the comments on that thread are disturbing, to say the least. The star of this particular show seems to be someone with the charming handle sir_humpslot, who starts off the conversation with accusing Asian women of “yellow cab service” (another way of calling Asian women sluts), accusing these women of playing “dragon lady,” and saying that the women brought the assault on themselves. UsAgainstThem adds, “Lets face it, white guys are fuckin perverts, no matter what they look like, they are thinking it, and they still get stupid ass whoreientals.” Apparently he not only is qualified to speak for the whole of male white America, but also has the insight into the inner workings of Asian women, as whoriental apparently implies that it is “biological for all Asian women to want to be desired.” And he wonders why it is these supposed “white perverts” who get the women while he, who clearly has such high regard for the “stupid ass whorientals,” can’t get the time of day from these women. Right.

It is heartening to see that amidst the racism and woman hating, there are some voices that try to highlight the problems rather than dismissing it as “white men are perverts” and “Asian women are whorientals”:

mahod:

What a disgusting pervert. Some things can not be forgiven.

Incidents like this show that the fetishization of AA [Asian American] women and the demasculinization of AA men are two sides of the same coin, and both are hurtful racism. AA men and women must join and fight this together.

SeoulOne:

I don’t think Asian culture blames women for being victims of sex crimes, and in that sense I didn’t agree with the authors of the article. But yes, community support is important but prevention should also have the same amount of attention. It’s stupid INDIVIDUALS who blame victims (not culture), a few stupid individuals have commented on here as well.

You can’t tell me that of these 50 incidents it was the women’s fault all along. DFH, are you saying that if women aren’t taught self defense that it’s their fault if they’re ever assaulted? Why is it their fault that they were minding their own business when some sicko attacked them via bodily fluids?

Knowing that racism, xenophobia, and woman blaming are in no way limited to the Asian American community does not make me feel better about what I read in that forum. Being friends with many open-minded and women friendly Asian Canadians cannot erase the bitter taste of some of those posts, any more than being part of and having friends in the nebulous white collective makes me feel any better about the Asian fetishism, and the sexual assault that goes with it, that permeates American culture. In the East Asia Blog comments I said, “When you have such a strong discourse of Otherness then how can you expect to even begin moving away from xenophobia and racisim?” Here I feel I must add “sexism” to xenophobia and racism, for women are very much part and victims of the discourse of Otherness. So, when are we going to step away from these discourses and start seeing people who are different from us as, well, people?

Via feminist_rage.